Just a Thing
by Nyah
Summary: Maybe it looked that way but it didn't start as a hate thing. Nikita/Alex.


**Disclaimer:** Nikita and company are not mine but thanks for considering the possibility.

**Note:** Don't know that Nikita's going to be my new favorite show but I couldn't pass up an ensemble of kick ass woman entirely, could I?

Rating: T, because Alex has a mouth on her.

**Just a Thing**

Something you maybe should know is it didn't start as a hate thing. It looked like that, probably, and probably should have been, but it wasn't. And I guess that has to do with the smack like everything did back then. It wasn't like I was as deep into the dope as I could have been but it happens real fast that you just kind of stop being surprised about the shit that happens to you. Dope gets you into weird places and dangerous places and that's just part of the deal; you do what you gotta do and you get your high and you try not to worry about it.

So it wasn't a hate thing. And it wasn't some fucked up hate thing that went all Stockholm and turned into a sex thing. I know sex things. I have a pretty good idea of just how many friendships or partnerships or whatever seem to be about innocent things or practical things but are really sex things.

It wasn't like that with me and her. It was a connection thing. An eerie kind of connection thing. And yeah, sometimes that kind of thing is just sex too but really, it wasn't that.

How it turned out is me and her as this two-woman team against the world. Well, no. Not against the world, I guess. Against the people who are against the world. But, I dunno, it feels a lot like me and her against the world and I guess ... when it comes down to it, that's why I'm in.

For her, it's this twisted redemption thing. I did the 'Why me?" bit but it wasn't hard to figure that out. She sees who she used to be in me and wants to save me from all that. It's this whole cliched hero quest thing. But it is what it is, right? She gets that it's a mess, a really twisted, hopeless mess. Since saving me always meant making me just like her.

I think the thing that makes her feel guiltiest is I know all this and I still want it.

To be fair, it's no less fucked up from my end.

Smack was never about forgetting the pain. That's not how it works. You don't forget and you still feel it there. You just don't care. It's like the world's this warm, hazy place and even that stuff that cuts right into your heart is too slow and blunt to worry about. So being on smack, it was like anything could happen to me and it just didn't matter because it would all be good again with the next hit. Even that thing that almost happened before Nikita found me. Even my parents.

So yeah, I was pissed as all hell when she pulled me out of there. Because it was awful. A lot of the time it was awful. But only for minutes at a time, hours maybe. Then I was high and it felt like nothing could be awful again. Every time.

Here it's like everything's awful all the time. It's like there's nothing you can trust. Like I'm Dorothy and that thing with my parents was just some tornado but the real joke is there's a man behind every curtain.

And I get it, I do. I was with dope and now I'm with her and it's sort of the same. I was living at one end of things and now I'm at the other. I get the reasons that most people live somewhere in the middle.

But what I get even better is I don't fit there anymore. I've gotten twisted into some shape that doesn't fit in that comfy place between the extremes. And maybe I'm lucky or something. I can stand on my own, no matter what, no matter where. That's something. I'm not going to go crying about it anyway, about how I'm messed up and it isn't fair. It is what it is, right?

What I'm going to do is get stronger and learn more and play dumb. I'm going to fight small and quiet, like she taught me, until I know enough to decide what's right and how this should go and who should die. I'm gonna pass their tests. I'm gonna ruin their jobs. I'm gonna stare right back at Michael and know I've already got him figured out, soul in his eyes, waiting for me to forgive him. He'll fall in love with me, Nikita says. Love, or something close enough.

And when it's over, if we're alive, I'll go back to her. And I won't be the girl who reminded her of her own wasted youth. I'll be a woman like a mirror. And she'll smile, maybe, because we'll both be okay. Which is better than we deserve. And I'll smile because I'm as good as she thought I could be. And because I found my own damn way home. And because, by then, maybe I'll love me as much as I love her.


End file.
